She Asked If It Is Real

She asked you on the way to school whether your job is a real job, and she was not being unkind.

She was seven. Somebody at school had said something, or she had worked something out, or a teacher had asked the class what their parents did and she had not been sure what to put. And she asked you in the car, in exactly the voice she uses to ask whether a fish can hear.

And you said something. You cannot now remember exactly what, which is the thing that has been bothering you, because you have a perfect memory of the question and almost none of your answer.

You think you said yes, of course it is, and then something about how it is complicated, and then you talked about the radio.

I am not going to tell you to be more confident in front of your children. I am going to talk about an instruction in Deuteronomy about how children learn things, because the mechanism in it is not a speech.

Teach them diligently, sitting and walking

There is an instruction in Deuteronomy about passing things on to children, and the striking part is where it says to do it.

It is one of the most famous sentences in the Old Testament and everybody remembers the first half.

And thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up. (Deuteronomy 6:7, King James Version)

You have four ordinary places to say a true thing, and none of them has ever once needed to be a lesson. Deuteronomy 6:7 puts the teaching in the house, on the road, at bedtime and at breakfast rather than in a formal setting, and the Holy Spirit is the one who brings that to a kitchen table with a finished piece of work on it.

Look at the four locations. Sitting in the house. Walking by the way. Lying down. Rising up. Not one of them is a special occasion.

Which means the instruction is not about making speeches to children. It is about saying true things in the middle of ordinary life, which is the only way anything has ever reached a seven year old.

You are able to say a true thing in an ordinary moment, and it has never once required a better setting. The Spirit of God is the one who makes an instruction about teaching children reach a woman in a car on a school run, and Deuteronomy 6:7 names the kitchen and the road rather than a classroom.

Why she asked

Let me say what her question was, because it was not a challenge.

She had no category for what you do. She has a category for teacher and for driver and for the man in the shop, and she has no category for a woman who makes things at the table and posts them and gets money back. She asked because she genuinely did not know.

You were never being doubted by a seven year old, and a real question has never once been a verdict. The Holy Spirit is the one who shows a woman what her own child was asking, and the written word puts the teaching of children into ordinary rooms in Deuteronomy 6:7.

And she will go on not knowing unless somebody tells her, because a child cannot see a business. She can see a shop. She can see a van with a name on it. She cannot see an order in an email and a box going to the post office.

What she can see is a thing in your hands. That is what a child has always been able to see.

You have something she can look at, and it has never once needed explaining first. His Spirit is the one who puts a true sentence in a mother's mouth at a kitchen table, and Deuteronomy 6:7 makes the passing on of truth an ordinary domestic act.

Say it, and show her one thing

So here is the exercise, and it has two halves, and a child needs both.

Say one true sentence to her. Yes, it is a real job. People pay me to make these and that is how we buy things. Said in the voice you use for ordinary facts, not the voice you use for reassurance.

You are able to say a plain true thing to your own child, and it has never once been too much for her. Deuteronomy 6:7 puts the saying of true things into the house and onto the road, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes one sentence possible for a woman who cannot remember what she said in the car.

Then show her one thing. A finished piece, an order on a screen, the stack of boxes going out on Thursday. One physical thing she can look at and touch.

She will ask four more questions, and they will be strange questions, like whether you are allowed to do it. Answer them plainly and do not get tired of them. And then go and do the work with her in the room if she wants to be there.

You were never required to give her a category first, and she has never once needed one to believe you. The Spirit of God carries a plain fact past a mother's worry about how it sounds, and the written word names sitting and walking and lying down as the places truth gets handed over in Deuteronomy 6:7.